


He was my host—he was my guest

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Jed's grandmother, Marriage, Mishaps, Thanksgiving Dinner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 08:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8659912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Since they'd closed on the house, Mary had been talking about her plans for the holiday.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ultrahotpink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultrahotpink/gifts).



In the years to come, Jed would freely admit it was all his fault. Mary had done the vast majority of the planning for the first Thanksgiving dinner they were hosting in the new house, even though her work was just as demanding, perhaps more so as she was assigned to McBurney, the visiting hand specialist who lived up to every damning stereotype about the sub-specialty, while he was coasting, relatively speaking, with Gibson, who was just about as delightful as an attending surgeon could be and who’d given out gift-cards to Starbucks to the whole team, even the med student on her audition rotation. Jed had almost wanted to take the young woman aside and let her know just how unusual Belinda Gibson was, but he thought it would either seem creepy or just sour and curmudgeonly, and so he’d only made sure he watched her suture for an hour before he sent her home early after giving her a glowing report in the online feedback module and showing it to her; she was flying back to San Diego and had a red-eye to catch but he could make it a little easier time-wise, especially since she’d snuffled a bit when she read what he wrote. Mary was right—it was so easy to be kind and he liked to think he hadn’t been so terrible before he’d met her, but he knew he was a better man for falling in love with her. 

Not a better homemaker though, that was apparent when Mary had shuffled down the stairs in her fuzzy pink robe and old slippers having slept in until 8 am, and asked sleepily where the turkey was. The 27 lb. turkey that was expected to feed 20 people, all arriving at 1 pm, that she had texted him repeatedly to start defrosting at least 2 days ago; he had sent her turkey emojis and fire emojis and refrigerator emojis and she had reasonably thought that meant he had moved the turkey from the freezer chest to the fridge, from the fridge to the counter, but unfortunately, he was much better at texting emojis than he was following his wife’s directions and now they had an icy asteroid of a bird sitting in a freezer chest next to her 2003 Subaru and no dinner. Well, they had the makings for stuffing and dressing (a North-South argument they enjoyed having because neither cared deeply about the outcome but watching his mother and her aunt June go at it during the engagement party had been a little like Bull Run 1 and 2), mashed potatoes, and maple pumpkin pie but as Mary spat out, “That is not what Thanksgiving is about, Jedediah. People, guests we invited, whom I pestered for RSVPs for the past 3 weeks, understandably expect to be served turkey.” He had jumped up, prepared to dash to whatever market he had to go to, to drive 90 mph up to New Hampshire if that’s what it took to get a turkey and return in time to throw on a festive tie and apron, when she sighed, pushed the loose hair back from her face, and said, “They’re all closed, Jed. It’s Thanksgiving. We can’t get a turkey today. Last night maybe, but not today.” 

She wouldn’t cry over it because she spent too much time not-crying about grandfathers who died on the table and teenagers who hadn’t worn seatbelts to weep over a turkey-less Thanksgiving, but he knew how disappointed she was. He could see it in her dark eyes and the way the corners of her mouth were tucked down, that tilt of her chin, but also in the box of china that sat on the dining room table, the careful arrangement of berries and pinecones on the mantle and the logs ready to be lit, the lists she had magneted to the fridge, shoved in the pocket of her white coat, nestled together on her bedside table, recipes and time-tables and asterisked food allergies (he didn’t believe Anne was allergic to all corn products but Mary hadn’t wanted to quibble and had a separate menu for her; they’d bonded over something nameless as interns, so Mary kept inviting her to things even though Anne did nothing but complain. What hay she’d made of the entrée-less Thanksgiving!). While he’d been observing and reflecting in a fairly ineffective attempt to avoid confronting his pathetic lameness in forgetting to do the one chore she’d asked of him, Mary had slumped back on the couch, limp as a noodle his gram would have said and from the Great Beyond, Grammy Gladys came through for her favorite grandson once again.

“Mary, will you let me fix this? Just, I don’t know, I’ll make you a cup of coffee and you can go back to bed for a while, then watch the parade a little? I screwed this up and I’m going to take care of it, I don’t want you to worry about it, sweetheart,” he said. 

She took a deep breath and he saw her decide to say yes before she opened her mouth, that pretty mouth he couldn’t resist kissing as soon as he woke up, even if she was still half-asleep; there hadn’t been one time when she hadn’t lifted a hand to his cheek to draw him closer, not since the first night they’d spent together on his lumpy couch, too exhausted to walk the short distance to his bed, waking tangled and cramped and so happy. It had been 6 months after Liza broke things off and a year since he’d admitted he was in love with Mary, the math of which had tormented him for the period of the difference, and then was hardly thought of again.

“Okay. But I don’t see what you’re going to do. You can’t microwave defrost a 27 lb. turkey,” Mary said. 

He’d been standing beside the kitchen island where the coffee-maker was so he just poured her a massive mug, sort of like a tureen of coffee, and walked it over to her, handing it to her and letting a hand rest on her slender shoulder beneath the fluffy pink of the robe. It was all hunched up with tension and he wanted so much for it to not-be. Maybe the parade would help? She really liked marching bands, having played French horn in a purple and gold uniform for four years of miraculous photos in a purple and gold album housed in Manchester, and Macy’s never stinted on those.

“Oh, I wouldn’t even try. Off to bed with you. I’ll call you in a while, give me an hour and then you can start taking out your entirely justified frustration with me on the potatoes,” he said. 

She took a sip from the cup, then rose and padded back up the stairs. If he wasn’t trying to extricate himself from the near-disaster his forgetful laziness had caused, the seasoned, oiled turkey would be in the oven and he could have followed her back up to bed and made sure the robe was very shortly tossed to the far corner of the room to mingle with the dust bunnies while he gave thanks sincerely and exuberantly for such a beautiful, passionate, ticklish wife. Perhaps, if he pulled this off, after the guests left…

He went back down and sent a barrage of texts; within a few minutes, his phone was the source of an unearthly din and he was sure Mary would hear it through the floor but then the water rushed through the pipes and he knew she’d been spared by the shower’s rain setting. She liked to take a long shower when she could and he had texted very strategically, taking into account the travel time from Boston and the distance to the T, the general wake-up time for surgery residents, and the gravity of the situation had not been lost on anyone he’d contacted. So by the time Mary came back down, her damp hair pulled back in a chignon, in those yoga pants she favored and he found the epitome of admirable honesty, given their lack of obfuscation of her hips and round bottom, and her favorite Fey/Poehler 2020 tee-shirt, the granite of the kitchen island was invisible. The entire surface was covered with boxes of pasta, the 2 boxes in their pantry and all the spaghetti Emma, Henry, Sam and Charlotte had been able to scare up, as well as a few cans of crushed tomatoes (that was Sam, he was always extra-prepared and knew better than to trust Jed in a crisis of this nature).

“The whole story is apocryphal, right? Like, it wasn’t Charlie Brown with the Pilgrims on one side and the Indians on the other and a big turkey in the middle. I bet if anyone had offered them an enormous bowl of pasta after nearly starving to death, that would have looked pretty good and really, what were the chances the turkey wasn’t going to end up too dry?” Jed said watching Mary’s face to see if he’d managed at least second base, if not the home run he was hoping for. She was taking a while, considering what he said he thought and he couldn’t bear it, so he blurted out,

“We have two jars of capers and Emma brought chilies, I’ll make a puttanesca and a fra diavolo!”

She burst out laughing then and he smiled in relief. The turkey would keep until Christmas and he’d never met a medical resident who would turn up his or her nose at a heaping bowl of pasta and the pie would taste just as good regardless. He wasn’t just telling himself lies, that was exactly what their friends had all said, though Emma had been rather put out with him and so there’d been a few choice words before Henry started to make make-nice noises and she’d relented.

“If we’re just making a million pounds of pasta, it seems like we have a little extra time to play with,” Mary said and Jed thanked everyone he could think of, Grammy Gladys and Sam, Emma and Mary’s sister Caroline who’d told him about Mary’s fondness for capers, grouchy Anne and her terrible boyfriend Byron who’d murder any show tune or charade he could get his hands on, Boy Scout Sam and patient Charlotte who was off to Malawi for 6 weeks tomorrow morning and had still not complained about anything, Jed even thanked the God he hardly believed in that he hadn’t ruined Thanksgiving and was instead, weirdly really, being rewarded for his flaws. His Mary was a very kind, very forgiving woman and he would just have to show her how well he understood that, without one emoji to cock it up, how well he knew how to be grateful.

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another Thanksgiving inspired Mercy Street modern AU, this time as a long overdue response to ultrahotpink's prompt "Frozen." I've not lived through this actual story but if you want, say, a loaf of bread for stuffing on Thanksgiving, you better hope there is a Portuguese bakery open to get something because your sister forgot to go to the store. I've taken most of our favorites out for a twirl here and I hope you enjoyed it, even though pie was not the focus :)
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson, whom I am thankful for on a regular basis.


End file.
